McNeal retrofitted a 41-foot Chris-Craft Stinger by putting in a pair of 650-hp engines and Bravo drives. McNeal borrowed a forklift one day and the friendship was struck. Both met when McNeal rented a building from Cassidy’s father in the early 2000s. Tasked with maintaining the boat is Cassidy’s good friend Jim McNeal. “A lot of people knock the Fountains but you’re not going to find a boat to perform and handle like they do,” Cassidy said. Engine builder Ron Potter built a pair of 1,350-hp engines for the V-bottom. Cassidy owned one of the more notable Fountains, a 42-footer that reportedly ran 140 mph. Having owned nearly a dozen boats over the years, Cassidy said his favorite brand is still a Fountain Powerboat. His stable of boats includes a Fountain 42 Poker Run Edition, Fountain 38 Center Console, a 46-foot Black Thunder, a 52-foot turbine powered Nor-Tech and a pontoon boat. He went in deep and currently owns five performance boats that he stores at his rental facility in Delaware. “The thrill of it just caught me like a kid at a circus.” From left to right: Michael Cassidy, Mike Cassidy, Jim McNeal and Joe Minchini.Ĭassidy got out of circle track racing-he competed for 15 years-to focus on boating.

“I never had been over 100 mph and that boat ran like 105,” he said. Cassidy prefers boating on his home waters of Chesapeake Bay and participating in poker runs.Ĭassidy got into high-performance boating almost two decades ago when he went for a ride in a 33-foot Baja with a pair of blown big-block engines. Today, long trips up and down the East Coast are left to his childhood. He had a compass and a chart and a Lowrance.” “You get a lot of education on navigating, especially when you get offshore and you’re out there for 10, 12 hours in a day,” said Cassidy, who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. The experience traveling back and forth to Florida by boat helped Cassidy develop a healthy respect for boats and the water. It’s only natural that Cassidy would get into performance boating, especially plodding along on big cruisers and sport fish boats as a kid. If there is a good time happening, I might stick around but other than that I can’t sit.” “He would pull in especially if there was a good bar and if the weather was foul the next day, he was in no rush to leave,” Cassidy said. Boat trips that should have taken a few days would stretch into a week. While Cassidy’s father preferred the journey, the son was about getting to the destination as quickly as possible.

Fountain 42 poker run edition